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Another Massive MoD Data Loss
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by Jordan Yerman | October 11, 2008 at 01:25 pm
196 views | 14 Recommendations | 5 comments
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UK Government offices continue their losing streak... that is, the streak of losing data. I'm actually bored of Highlighting stories about this.
The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details.
It also has data on 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.
Officials are "not ruling out" the risk that bank account details of personnel were held on the drive, which belonged to its IT contractor EDS.
The department said it learned of the loss on Wednesday and MoD Police were investigating.
Liberal Democrat shadow defence secretary, Nick Harvey said: "This is extremely serious news and the immediate priority must be to ensure the security of all military personnel.
"However, once that has been established, there must be an urgent investigation into how such a disturbing breach of security could be allowed to happen."
The MoD spokeswoman was unable to confirm reports that the missing data was not encrypted.
(thanks, Slashdot!)
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (5)
at 13:29 on October 11th, 2008
jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.
What the hell is going on with Whitehall? We're leaking like a sieve, over here! At this rate, we're not going to need ID cards, as everyone's personal data will be nicked and published - we'll have nothing left to hide.
at 13:49 on October 11th, 2008
How is it that I am not surprised? I would like the portable harddrives of some of our European banks to be lost and then bared in public. Let data stream away....
at 14:00 on October 11th, 2008
Yeah, one of my many concerns with National ID Cards is that the data which they contain will be just as "safe" as the data that keeps getting lost.
at 14:51 on October 11th, 2008
jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 02:35 on October 12th, 2008
jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff. I love these stories of such gross incompetence but they infuriate me too. The culprits should be named and shamed and forced to be imprisoned in those old fashioned stocks where they can be pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes (and a few things). What most angers me is Grumpy Gordon keeps saying "it will never be allowed to happen again"; then another 'loss' occurs the following week! And it appears that many of the so called 'civil servants' (joke phrase!) disregard all the protocols!